1. That Slavonic is most closely united with German (Grimm, Schleicher);
2. That German is most closely united with Celtic (Ebel, Lottner);
3. That Celtic is most closely united with Latin (Newman, Schleicher);
4. That Latin is most closely united with Greek (Mommsen, Curtius);
5. That Greek is most closely united with Sanskrit (Grassmann, Sonne, Kern);
6. That Sanskrit is most closely united with Zend (Burnouf).
Let a mathematician draw out the result, and it will be seen that we know in the end no more than we knew at the beginning. Far be it for me to use a mere trick in arguing, and to say that none of these conclusions can be right, because each is contradicted by others. Quite the contrary. I admit that there is some truth in every one of these conclusions, and I maintain, for that very reason, that the only way to reconcile them all is to admit that the single dialects of the Aryan family did not break off in regular succession, but that, after a long-continued community, they separated slowly, and, in some cases, contemporaneously, from their family-circle, till they established at last, under varying circumstances, their complete national independence. This seems to me all that at present one may say with a good conscience, and what is in keeping with the law of development in all dialects.
If now we turn away from the purely philological results of the Science of Language, in order to glance at the advantages which other sciences have derived from it, we shall find that they consist mostly in the light that has been shed on obscure words and old customs. This advantage is greater than, at first sight, it might seem to be. Every word has its history, and the beginning of this history, which is brought to light by etymology, leads us back far beyond its first historical appearance. Every word, as we know, had originally a predicative meaning, and that predicative meaning differs often very considerably from the later traditional or technical meaning. This predicative meaning, however, being the most original meaning of the word, allows us an insight into the most primitive ideas of a nation.
Let us take an instance from jurisprudence. Pœna, in classical Latin, means simply punishment, particularly what is either paid or suffered in order to atone for an injury. (Si injuriam faxit alteri, viginti quinque æris pœnœ sunto, fragm. xii. tab.) The word agrees so remarkably, both in form and meaning, with the Greek ποινή, that Mommsen assigned to it a place in what he calls Græco-Italic ideas.[5] We might suppose, therefore, that the ancient Italians took pœna originally in the sense of ransom, simply as a civil act, by which he who had inflicted injury on another was, as far as he and the injured person were concerned, restored in integrum. The etymology of the word, however, leads us back into a far more distant past, and shows us that when the word pœna was first framed, punishment was conceived from a higher moral and religious point of view, as a purification from sin; for pœna, as first shown by Professor Pott (and what has he not been the first to show?) is closely connected with the root pu, to purify. Thus we read in the “Atharva-veda,” xix. 33, 3:—
“Tvám bhû́mim átyeshi ójasâ